There was a specific way that you can obtain cisco certifications. First, You would get the ccna you could either get the ccna by taking two halves of it or you could knock it all out on the composite exam. After that, You will move on to ccnp, Which is a cisco certified network, Professional and ccie. If you want to, You know, Go to the extreme what I did last year in april was, I obtained the ccent, Which is the first half of the ccna, And I would have obtained the other half but.
You know life started happening and . I got interested in the security plus out of nowhere. So long story short. I ended up. You know trying to get the certification at the very last second and unfortunately, I failed to obtain it february of this year came, And that was the deadline you had to get either.
You know the whole ccna to one exam or both halves before that time period and then, After that, Everything changed and when I mean change like it changed a lot and the reason for the change . To sum it all up, Was you know, Cisco had been doing their research, You know seeing what enterprise companies are looking for and people that you know have cisco certifications, And you know some of the areas you know these enterprise companies focus in or would want somebody To have knowledge of upon hiring them, So cisco decided, , You know, After of course, Doing the research that t're gonna change everything up, T're, Gonna have specific areas of focus and t're gonna add a lot more to the ccna and t're gonna. You know intensify their focus in these specific areas like network automation, Ccna security, Ccna design, All of those things t really kind of just wanted to catch up with the times with this whole revamp. So since I did not obtain both halves of the ccna before everything switched over, I had to start from square one, Meaning that the first certification that I got the icnd1 was considered invalid or obsolete anyways.
Another thing that changed when t did this revamp was t made it to where you can no longer get half of the ccna before obtaining the whole thing. You have to take the whole exam. All in one spend all the money you either get it or you got to try again, Which was a little nerve-wracking. You know but.
Fortunately, I took the punch and decided I'm gonna start all the way over from scratch, And the reason why I decided to start all the way over from scratch was because, With the change, A lot of topics were getting added to the ccna and the only way I was going to feel comfortable taking the exam if I start from scratch and do everything. Over again, And after four months of studying labbing reading losing nights of sleep, I managed to pass the ccna 200-301 a couple of days ago, Which is exactly what I needed, Because you know, As I told you in my most recent article up until now, That I had some serious impasto syndrome, After obtaining my role as a network administrator without any cisco certifications. Now that I got the certification, I feel as if, Though I can, You know, Take a breath. You know not worry about actually being qualified for my job and just continue to get familiar with my job.
The point of me making the article in the first place, Was to, Of course, Let you know that I passed, But I also wanted to give you some perspective and my own personal review on how the test was, And some of the things that I Did to prepare for the test first thing that I will say is the test was long and what I mean by long is . When before everything switched, And I took the ic and d1 there were about 70 questions around 70 questions. You know you had how long did you have you had about an hour and 30 minutes to knock out the test? If I'm not mistaken, And you know, Of course there were. You know different variety of questions that you would have to go through and perform in order to. You know secure that certification.
There will be some performance-based questions. There will be multiple choice, There will be simulations, And this is all in the old stuff. In this new certification, All of that is gone well, Not all of it, But long story short. You know, As as you probably already know, The simulations have been removed from the ccna certification exam and with them removing those simulations. What t did is t added 30 more questions to the exam, So there was over 100 questions and t were basically like testing. You know your ability to retain knowledge when it comes to networking wireless security - and you know, Automation, Wireless security and automation.
Actually are the topics that t decided to add to the ccna talk a little bit more about that in a minute, But anyways the test was long. You know t give you a whole two hours to take the test and you have to sit there and go through question by question. You know in order to hit that finishing line and for me sitting in front of a screen for two hours you know answering over 100 questions was was not necessarily intense, But it got old.
But fortunately, After the mountain of questions, I managed to come out on top and what's crazy, Is you know it's not that I did better than I expected when I seen my score I was. I was a little impressed with myself going into the test. You know. I had some doubts. I was a little nervous because I had gotten so comfortable with studying.
You know the material before everything switched where everything was just rotting and switching and you know configurations, And you know vlans and all that good stuff. Now I gotta learn about wireless. I gotta learn about automation. I gotta learn about you, Know security, Which wasn't too hard because I got the security plus, But still you know that kind of you know that kind of stuff will make anyone nervous out of 1000.
I scored 900. Actually I scored at 895, But we just go and round it up and say 900, Which was pretty good. You know I was happy with my score and also I was really impressed with the test.
To be completely honest, It was 100 questions, But you know t were. T were interesting questions. You know t definitely tested my knowledge and you know there was a couple of questions I had to really think about, And you know I had to had to do a little road mapping in my head in order to get the right answer. But you know, Of course you know after you get the right answer. You just move on and you feel good because you feel as if, Though you know, You know what you're doing so .
I was really impressed with the test. You know I know, There's some people that may have said that you know it was boring and you know it's kind of just like. Do you remember this? , Do you remember that? But for me you know somebody that's relatively new to the it industry. Kinda sorta, It was right up my alley and you know, Since of course I did the proper studying and all that good stuff. I managed to knock it out some of the study materials that I used in order to prepare for the certification. I used quite a couple of methods.
The article series that I went with was the 426 article long cbt nugget series with jeremy, Chara, Keith baker and network chuck, And although the article series was very long you know t made sure t went over. All of the information and what I mean by all of the information like it's like everything, Configuration and then some t also touched on topics that weren't even covered on the ccna, Which is good. You know if you're trying to make this your profession. I also used the official cisco cert guide, Books, Both volume, One and volume - two.
You know, Of course, To just read along and you know, Go a little bit deeper on some of those topics. You know just read them and get real comfortable with them and the last platform that I use that, In my opinion, Sealed the deal when it came to me getting the certification was boson net sims or actually it was their practice exams for the ccna certification. In my opinion, That was probably the best resource I could have used when it came to actually taking practice tests.
I took quite a few other practice tests. You know to see if I could get a feel for it and looking at it. In retrospect.
Now that I actually taken the test, Boson was very spot on with the layout of the questions. You know t were even kind of tricky with the wording you know. Of course, Similar high was on the actual test. If I didn't have the boson practice exams, I probably would have had a little bit of a harder time trying to hit that 825 mark. One thing that I also wanted to talk about in regards to the test was, You know the difference when it comes to how deep t went on topics instead of going deeper on topics, T went really broad, As I mentioned earlier them, Adding wireless security and network Automation, In my opinion, All of those topics are, You know, Kind of curveballs, Because when it comes to routing and switching you don't think about, You know configuring wireless lan controller or interpreting, Json or knowing what xml is or when it comes to.
You know network automation, Knowing the difference between north and south interfaces and all of that stuff. One thing that I will say is you know, No matter how comfortable you are with navigating configuring and troubleshooting routers and switches make sure you cover all of the topics. Make sure you get just as comfortable with wireless security and the network automation side of things? One thing that I really appreciate about the certification was that t covered all of the topics. Equally, What I mean is, Like you know, I feel as if, Though, T asked a nice amount about routing a nice amount about switching, T definitely covered the newer topics.
You know you know to test how much you know, And you know if you are familiar with certain configurations. You know t touched on ipv6, Of course, Because that's the exam topics t touched on automation, T touched on json. T touched on puppet chef, All that good stuff.
So whoever is reading this while getting ready for the certification make sure you do your due diligence make sure you, You know, Study all of the material, Don't lack in a certain area, Because you think the test won't talk about it. If you cover everything, Then you won't be surprised when the test questions start hitting you now that I've gotten my ccna now I got a little bit of wiggle room. I'm really wondering the path that I want to go now, Like I told you before you know, Being a network engineer was you know, Kind of like my end goal, Or at least my ultimate goal when it came to the it industry? Now you know with the pandemic and covet 19 and all this stuff going on I'm starting to change. You know change things up and I might go down a different path and .
That path might be cloud. What I might do, If I don't go for the ccmp is. I might get a cloud certification, I might go with azure or aws one of the people that gave me the idea to go that route potentially was network.
Chuck if you're in 19 you're interested in networking, I'm pretty sure you know who he is, He has a youtube channel called network chuck and right now, He's actually producing his own content. S own series basically getting everybody familiar with all the topics needed in order to pass the ccna. As I said before, Him, Jeremy and keith are on cbt nuggets and t already have a article series talking about this. So if you do need a article series, I recommend going to check that out I'll link it in the description below, But for the most part, That's all. I really got for you today.
You know I kind of just wanted to talk about the ccna. You know go over my experience with it and. You know some of the things that I use to study for it, And also I wanted to encourage you that if this is the path you want to go with some like really hard studying, It could be even a little bit of passive studying you Could knock this out anywhere from two months to four or five months? For me it took about four or five because of course I was studying and you know actually doing it in my day-to-day job every day. So you know studying was a little difficult, But take it from me. If I can do it, You can do it if you enjoyed the content in this article. Please, Like subscribe, Leave a comment in the section below and .
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